Tabs

Monday, April 30, 2012

Hi Everyone!! If you are here for the first ever Paper Girls Challenge Blog Hop welcome, welcome, welcome! You should be arriving here from Judy's Blog.

If you are just joining us now and would like to take part in the Blog Hop for a pretty sweet prize, click the following link <<HERE>> to start at the very beginning.

If you are here for the Giveaway I had a few weeks ago when I was Guest Sketcher at ScrapbookSteals, click <<HERE>>

If you're wondering why I have fallen a bit behind with everything, click <<HERE>>

And now back to the task at hand! The Paper Girls Challenge ATC Blog Hop! ATC's or Artist Trading Cards are like the Baseball cards to the Crafting World. They are super cute mini works of art that crafters/scrappers/artists create and then swab with their crafty/scrappy/artsy buddies!

A year ago I had never even heard of ATC's before and took part in my first trade with one of my favourite websites, ScrapbookSteals. It was such a treat to receive little pieces of ATC goodness from all the women I'd come to know online. My very first set of ATC's took me forever to make and I think I spent far too much time on each one and tried to make them all individually different somehow. It was taking me upwards of an hour to finish one little 2.5x3.5 inch card. Crazy.

Since then I organize my thoughts a bit more and make my ATC's easy to recreate so that if there's another trade going on I can whip some up without spending days and days and days.

With an amazing online community of Scrappers, since my introduction to the ATC world, there have been quite a few swaps that have taken place and each time I marvel at the beautiful works of art that each person creates.

I always want the ATC's that I receive from others close by so that I can admire them, I keep them in a carousel by Seven Gypsies. (I wanted to give a link to their website, but their site is currently down). I love the little carousel that sits on the shelf over my crafty space and it's the perfect size for all the cards.

This Spring there is another swap fast approaching. I decided to base my cards on Spring Flowers. First I cut out my bases and covered them all with green or pink patterned paper from Echo Park's Style Essentials Runway line. Using patterned papers from their Victoria Gardens collection I stamped out enough flowers to have 3 on each card. The flower stamp and the sentiment stamp are all from The Stamps of Life. After some fussy cutting and some quick assembly the cards came together. I embellished them a bit by adding some glitter to the edges and some Crystal Effects from Stampin' Up to the flower centres.

Here they are ready to be mailed away!

Here are some other ATC's that I've had fun creating:

Fall Pumpkins

Winter Peguins

Thank you so much for stopping by!! Don't forget to leave a comment below and you're ready to go to the next blog on the hop! ﻿

Want to win? Get one entry for commenting on each of the blog posts, "like" the Paper Girls Challenge on Facebook, and finally become a follower on our blog. It's simple, you get to see some fabulous projects and you know you want to!

Want to have more fun after seeing all of the inspiring projects? Join in! Link up an ATC created by you and you will get an extra entry for the prize! (Link up your ATC on the ATC Post at PGCB)

International readers are welcome to play along but currently we are only shipping prize packs to the US and Canada due to shipping costs.

Hi!
I feel frazzled and behind and I'm so sorry that it has taken me several weeks to get the winner of the Mini Album Giveaway posted!
The original post went up a week before I was due to fly overseas and I thought I'd be all organized and have everything posted, mailed and sorted before I left.......Ha! Joke's on me!

So after many apologies, here's the winner of the Fancy Pants Beach Bum/Beach Babe 6x6 album that I made in conjunction with my Guest post over at ScrapbookSteals....

Saturday, April 28, 2012

I think I still am on a vacation high, even though I have been home now for 10 days or so, I can't seem to bring myself back down from the absolutely amazing time I had!

In a word...errr...in a photo I should say:

Outstanding.

Where is this you might ask? Well, my travels took me overseas to spend a jam packed week in Scotland! A trip that I had been planning for about 6 months finally came to fruition and even while I was over there I truly could not believe I had finally made it!

Back in October of 2011 I was presented with an opportunity to fly over to celebrate a very special day with some very special people who are near and dear to my heart. Of course initially it seemed an impossibility that I would be able to fly over, with exorbitant flight costs, taking time off work, do I bring my 2 year old son with me? Could we afford it? Do we all fly over? Just me? Questions after questions of why I couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't go. Finally my husband (who earned uber brownie points with this one) said that I needed to go. It would do me good, I haven't flown overseas (family in England) in eleven years, so go, have a wonderful time and he said he would hold down the fort while I was gone.

So flights were booked, hotels booked, itinerary planned....the hardest part was waiting from October to April!

In the meantime my brother heard that I was travelling abroad and asked if he could tag along. Now an adult, he has not been on a plane since he was 5 years old and hasn't been on a holiday without our parents. I think he needed a chance to stretch his travelling wings. After I had had such a fantastic vacation last summer in New York City with my sister, I thought this would be a great opportunity to spend some time with my brother and make travel memories of our own. (Ideally it would have been amazing for all 3 of us could have gone)

Finally April came round I was so excited to leave! We flew from Ottawa to Toronto, then to Amsterdam (yep we had a 4 hour layover in The Netherlands!) and then to Glasgow. A very long and weary 24 hours of flights and airports, but once we arrived on Scottish soil it was worth it!

I went camera crazy while over there, so here is a highlighted reel of the 500+ photos that came home with me:

﻿Me outside St Mungo's Cathedral, Glasgow

A Celtic Cross Tombstone within the Glasgow Necropolis

Inside the Nave of St Mungo's, Glasgow

Stirling Castle, Stirling

The National William Wallace Monument, Stirling

﻿

Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh

St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh

My Brother and I at The Treehouse, Loch Goil﻿

The Lookout, Loch Goil

The Treehouse at The Lodge, Loch Goil

Loch Goil in the Evening

(the photo at the top is of the countryside where we stayed for a few days in Balfron)

﻿As with any vacation, this one went by too quickly and one week was not enough time. We had a spectacular time and were able to see and learn so much! Most important most of that week was spent with a group of truly amazing people who I love and cannot thank enough for travelling with us and driving us around! From walking around discovering the city of Glasgow, to sightseeing in Stirling and Edinburgh to celebrating and relaxing on the shores of Loch Goil I will cherish the memories I've made.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Holy Jumpins' I cannot begin to describe how excited I am today! I was asked several weeks ago, to design a Mid Week Mojo Sketch for my favourite Scrappy website, ScrapbookSteals.com!! Today's the day it goes live over on their blog, so go and check it out here! I never in a million years would have believed I would have the opportunity to take part in something like this! I have to say a HUGE Thank You to Kristy Lee and the wonderful Team over at ScrapbookSteals! It does mean more than I can say. Since August 2010 when I was first introduced to the MWM's and scrapbooking I have "met" a beautiful community of crafty women who have taught me so much and inspired me endlessly! There have been some seriously amazing and talented guest designers previously featured, so I just hope today I do the sketch and the kits I worked with justice :)

If you were sent here from ScrapbookSteals, welcome to my little blog! In honour of being featured over on their website, I wanted to do a bit of a giveaway here. Using Fancy Pants' Beach Bum and Beach Babe paper kits I put together a 6x6 Mini Album and would love to send it to someone. All they need to do is add their own photos!

Want a closer look at the album's pages? Here they are:

Here's how to enter:1. Just leave a comment on this blog post! It's as simple as that! Comments can be posted up until Monday April 9th, 2012 at 11:59pm. I will randomly draw a winner on Tuesday April 10th and post it here, so make sure you check back!

2. Want an extra entry? Click on "Join This Site" (yes a totally shameless plug on my part haha!) on the side bar and leave a second comment on this blog post saying that you're now following my blog. Already following? Leave a 2nd comment saying so! A Huge Thank you thank you thank you!!!

Here's some close up pictures of the layout. I had alot of fun putting this challenge together for The Paper Girls Challenge Blog. Be Sure to head on over to check out how to enter your own Recipe Challenge!!

I tried something new with this layout too (new for me anyways) by altering these vinyl Thickers using gold, silver and blue embossing powders to create a marbled/speckled lettering. I thought it came out pretty cool looking.

For the foam thickers that spell out "beach" I changed the once plain white alphas to sparkly blue using several shades of Stickles!